1.15.2018

Turn And Face The Strange

Disclaimer: This post is not really for you. It's for me. It will quite likely be disjointed and random and provide too much information in to the way my mind works through stuff. If you want the rainbow-farting unicorn/everything is awesome all the time Todd, you probably shouldn't read this. This might shatter any preconceived notions you have of me. That guy hangs out a lot on Facebook. This post deals with an epiphany that I suffered last week, and to be perfectly frank, sorting things out in this blog is cheaper than therapy. And the other side of it (the side that is for you) is this. If you recognize yourself in anything I've put down here, then you know one thing--you're not alone.

Still with me? Great. Let's begin.

I still don't know what I was waiting for

And my time was running wild

A million dead-end streets

And every time I thought I'd got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet

So I turned myself to face me

But I've never caught a glimpse

Of how the others must see the faker

I'm much too fast to take that test

The above lyrics were taken from the David Bowie classic, "Changes," which first appeared on the album Hunky Dory, released December 1971, one month after I was born.

There are a handful of songs that hit me straight in the soul. Songs where if I sit and contemplate their meaning and how the lyrics apply to me, they will reduce me to a blubbering blob of a dude.

This is one of those songs. The rest of the song is amazing and hits me just as hard, but this first verse just sums up everything to a tee.

I know I mentioned the epiphany on Facebook last and hinted at a lunchtime bloggy blog to dive into detail, sorry about the delay, but here is said blog.

The epiphany I suffered last week was this little bit of a mind fuck. From a Facebook post that went mostly unnoticed:

Cognitive dissonance...social anxiety...emotional dissonance...that feeling that this is all somehow not where I’m meant to be.

As those have come up in my life in the past, I have used them as a warning that I have strayed off the path and am not doing what I’m “meant to be doing” in this lifetime, so I alter course and change.

But what if those are actually my indication that I’m about to breakthrough and hit that next level?

All those times I turned away, I could have been so much closer to the purpose.

So..yeah. That's my pattern...I'm chugging along thinking I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing and there's that weird little thread getting tugged. It's annoying at first, so you think you can just do a quick tug and everything will be fine. Next thing you know, you have unraveled several rows of your favorite shirt, or scarf, or messenger bag.

And that is a very uncomfortable feeling. That feeling like suddenly everything is wrong. Or maybe it isn't everything. Maybe it's only the little things. Maybe it's the little fact that your wife for the last 3 years never said goodnight when she was going to bed and you were downstairs working on something. Or the fact that you write and pour your heart out and she rarely, if ever, gave unsolicited feedback of any kind on your writing. Or the other wife who told you that you had a knack for lyrics, but you probably shouldn't try singing because something was just...off.

Those are, of course, hypothetical examples and in no way, shape, or form, still cut deep and sting nearly 20 years later.

Back to Bowie:

I still don't know what I was waiting for

And my time was running wild

A million dead-end streets

And every time I thought I'd got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet

That's kind of me. At age 45, I published my first book. Seriously...what was I waiting for? It's easy to oversimplify that question, so I won't insult anyone's intelligence, least of all mine. A large portion of that was timing, so I'm not sure that entirely counts.

I'm going to cut to the chase here. The song is called Changes.

And let's be honest, I suck at handling change. Small changes I'm generally OK dealing with. The Big Pharma sponsorship package I'm ingesting probably helps the most with those little course corrections that occur on a daily basis. The bigger ones where I have an expectation of something (realistic or not) are harder to deal with. Plans getting cancelled or altered. Unexpected bills. Things like a laptop dying for no reason.

I put on a good game face. But those things seriously fuck with me. When that happens, then I tend to do a deep dive and start overthinking everything that's going on in my life. I start putting attributes and reactions there to things that are completely in my fucking head because there is no external proof to validate what I'm thinking!.

It's the ultimate mindfuck and I do it to myself.

I am in a time of change in my life.

I will be moving in the spring of this year. I hate moving. As good as I know this move will be for me, I still find myself finding reasons why this won't work the way I expect it to. It's dumb. I know that. It's completely irrational, but it's still back there, just floating in the back channels of my mind.

That's not the only change though, I've become more focused on what I want to do with my writing this year. I have set goals. And I'm working to achieve them. That's a change for me. Because the more I put myself out there, the greater the risk of being exposed. Being exposed for a shit writer who probably shouldn't pick up a pen if he can at all help it. Now, I don't think I'm actually a shit writer, but that question will always be there. I don't think I'm alone in that. I know plenty of other artists who go through similar doubts.

Here's the one that really kind of messes with me (and I'm sure I've talked about it on this blog ad nauseam), but here it is. What if I'm good? What if I'm really, really good at this writing thing? What then? Then I don't have any excuses. Then I have to put in the hard work that I know it takes to write the books and get them out to the world. Then I have to struggle with that question of at what point to I become a full time writer/author? Fear of success is a thing, too.

But here's where I had the epiphany.

In the past when I had those gnawings in my brain that my life wasn't where it was meant to be, that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, I changed course. Marriages (yes plural) weren't working? Maybe I'm not cut out for marriage. I am now one marriage/divorce away from needing to study paleontology and dance with my friends around a fountain in New York.

I look back at just how many times I changed my direction because of that nagging feeling.

And I was starting to get it, quite recently (times of big change tend to trigger it). As I was looking at my life through a bourbon flavored period of reflection, I realized something. I don't want to change course. The writing is going the direction I want it to go. The people in my life are the people that need to be in my life, so I'm not ready to shuffle that social deck of cards right now.

That's what got me thinking...what if that feeling doesn't mean 'turn away.' What if it means, instead, 'hey...dude, you're close. This is your subconscious early warning detection system and that awesome life you always dreamed about is right ahead of you!! Press on, for godssakes, press on!!!!'

That was the mindfuck. Thinking back to all of the times I turned away instead of pressing through. Instead of going to the other side of the fear. And yes, I know that the experiences I went through made who I am, and I'm not discounting any of that.

I don't know if that I pressed through those odd feelings I would be in a different place now. I probably would. Would it be a better place? I can't really say. I'm not a Time Lord. And even if I was, I could never go back on my own timeline.

I guess the long and short of it is, I should have listened to that little nagging thread earlier on. NOT because I'm not happy with how my life is going now, but because running away from the things that scare me or make me uncomfortable is never going to get me where I want to be.

I also recently remembered, that when your favorite sweater has a little loose thread, you can cut just that piece of loos thread off and keep going.